1. Field of the Invention:
The invention relates generally to the field of gaming and, more particularly to parimutuel betting methods and parimutuel gaming systems.
2. State of the Art:
Parimutuel betting is a system of cooperative wagering where the holders of winning tickets divide the total amount of money bet on a race or other pool after deductions for taxes and racetrack expenses are taken out of the pool. In parimutuel betting, the payoff odds are determined by the number of people betting. For instance, if a lot of people bet on the eventual winner, the payoff odds are lower since the winners split the pool. Parimutuel betting is typically used at horse-racing tracks, but is also used at other types of racing tracks including greyhound tracks, automobile tracks, and jai alai frontons.
Parimutuel wagers are placed at racetracks, off track betting (OTB) sites, on betting websites and by telephone. The wagers are generally funded with cash, printed vouchers or a wager account established by a patron on a parimutuel gaming system. When patrons place wagers with cash or vouchers, the patron receives a redeemable ticket in exchange for the cost of the wager. When a wager account is used to fund the wager, the wagers are generally not printed, but are associated with the wager account of the patron and winnings are automatically credited to the wager account when a race result goes official.
Once the race result is official, patrons watch for official result postings on television monitors or tote boards and compare their tickets to the result postings to determine the results of their wagers and the value of their winnings. If the wager was made with cash or a voucher, the patrons may feed the tickets into a staffed wagering terminal or a self-service wagering terminal to receive credit for their winnings. If the wager was placed with a wager account, the patron can check their wager account to verify that winning wagers have been credited to their wager account.
Existing processes for communicating parimutuel wagering results to the patron requires significant patron effort, even when simple “straight” pool wagers, such as Win bets, have been placed. The inconvenience to the patron becomes more pronounced when the patron has made complex bet combinations or has placed wagers into multiple parimutuel pools. In these cases, it can be difficult for bettors to understand how the posted results affect their wagers and to calculate their winnings in cash or an account balance. This difficulty is caused by the number of wagers placed, the fact that prices of the race results may be displayed on tote boards or television monitors in denominations of $1 or $2, and because the patron's ticket may be of a different value denomination than the posted price value.
Referring to FIG. 1, there is illustrated a known display of prices for a completed race. For a patron to calculate the total value of a $1 Win/Place/Show wager on the #6 horse, the patron would have to perform the following calculation: ½*(6.20+3.40+2.60)−$3 for the original bet=$6.10 payout−$3 bet=a $3.10 profit. Since a novice patron may not understand how to calculate the value of a wager, the novice patron would feel intimidated and have an unenjoyable parimutuel gaming experience. The tickets of FIG. 2 illustrate how complex some wagers placed in a single pool can become. The tickets of FIG. 2 indicate that the player covered forty Trifecta combinations, and the tickets are a printed record of the wagers.
In a simulcast environment, the race results and payoff prices are typically displayed on television monitors, wherein the television monitors display substantially the same information as illustrated in FIG. 1. However, the availability of the race results on the television monitors is limited since the parimutuel gaming establishments usually display previously run race results on less prominent television monitors in order to make room for upcoming races at other tracks.
Because of the complexity of the wagers and the limited access to the race results, patrons frequently return to self-service betting terminals and feed each ticket they have into the betting terminal to see if the ticket is a winner. This may prevent or hinder other patrons from placing new wagers. When betting off-site with a telephone wagering system or on the Internet, the patron must either call the account wagering line or log on to a website and re-enter their account number and personal identification number (PIN) or password in order to retrieve their updated account balance or view the results of a race.
These existing processes cause numerous problems. As one example, at onsite parimutuel gaming establishments, it is necessary to print paper tickets or bet receipts in order to aid the player in recalling his/her bet selections and, thus, the cost of providing the wagering machines and the tickets combined with facility maintenance to clean up the discarded tickets increases the overall operating costs. Further, patron dissatisfaction grows due to the effort required to obtain the betting results. For instance, the patron may need to feed numerous tickets into the wagering terminals. Further, due to poor print quality of the ticket or ticket wear, it is not uncommon for terminals to reject a winning ticket. Thus, the player may become dissatisfied if they thought the ticket was a winner, but the ticket is rejected by a gaming terminal and leaves the patron to infer that the ticket is a loser. The large number of discarded tickets may also create an incentive for “stoopers” who sift through the discarded tickets in an attempt to find a discarded winning ticket. These “stoopers” are viewed as undesirable to the parimutuel wagering establishment.
These problems may decrease the chances that the patrons will return to the racetrack, since the customer may perceive that the problems are caused by the racetrack being an out-of-date facility that relies on old and inconvenient technology. Further, the racetrack may experience decreased wager handle (i.e., the total amount of money bet on a race or over a period of time) since patrons may be distracted from handicapping the next race and placing wagers while the patron is calculating and investigating results from finished races. The wager handle may also decrease from the inefficient use of wager terminals by patrons investigating results of completed wagers instead of placing new wagers. Thus, the patron may be more inclined to place a minimum or low wager amount to simplify translation of tote board results to see if they have won, which also decreases wager handling.
Problems also exist at offsite parimutuel gaming establishments. For instance, when telephone wagers are placed, the patrons have no accessible record of their bet selections without a printed receipt. Although the patron may be able to access his/her wagers via the Internet if the offsite parimutuel gaming establishment has an Internet website, the patron may become dissatisfied with the added effort of having to retrieve the results. Further, since patrons sometimes have to leave the track or offsite betting facility before the race goes official, obtaining the official results to see if they win is an annoyance to the patrons.
Participation in gaming activities at offsite parimutuel gaming establishments may also lead to uncertainty for the patrons as to whether race results have gone official. The length of time it takes to make results official can vary greatly due to technical delays or track judge delays. Also, when a patron calls or logs in to check race results, the patrons don't know whether the balance retrieved in their account is before or after official prices. A lack of visibility for race results and prices, and of the patron's individual wager results exist. For instance, although some account wagering systems have result lines, they are not filtered in relation to the patron's wagers and are onerous to navigate. Further, telephone wagering lines generally only recap a total balance of the patron, and not an individual bet or ticket result.
Thus, a need exists for a more efficient parimutuel gaming activity and a parimutuel gaming system that solves the aforementioned difficulties.